Wednesday, September 29, 2010

If you're a resident of Second Life®, you probably know that shoes are very popular there.

Until recently, I never bothered with shoes, since I'm usually barefoot in both worlds. But I decided that I wanted to have some for an outfit I was working on, and, well... turns out that shoes are really interesting to make!

So, although the outfit is still on the back burner, I now have several kinds of shoes available for sale in SL.

I just finished making Mary Janes for little girls.

These are original sculpts, made in modo and imported through Blender, and then carefully textured.

They have textured soles, realistic silver buckles, stitching, and an eyelet border at the top edge of the toe. Inside, they have hearts sprinkled on the lining, and my logo on the insole. Included in the purchase is a Base Shoe, a v2 Alpha Layer, and instructions. There's a really easy to use resize script in a single prim that resizes the entire shoe, so it's a snap to get a perfect fit.

I made 8 colors of the Patent Leather shoes. You can get them individually for L$150, or you can buy the Fat Pack (shown above) for L$1050. That's 8 pairs for the price of 7! Available now in in the Girl's section of the Kick the Can Main Store. Come try on a demo!

On Monday (when I usually do the filming) I was quite surprised to find that my voice was just not working. Every few words it would seem to catch, and .. nothing would come out. Okay, I've had a sore throat, but this was ridiculous!

I tried again on Tuesday morning. Except when I listened to the first take, there was a horrible annoying cyclic buzz-buzz-buzz through the whole thing. I turned off everything in the house that I could turn off, and the buzz persisted. So I kept trying. Finally, I was able to get a decent recording. I have no idea what was causing the buzz, or why it stopped long enough to film, but I'm glad that it did.

So, here's the second in the series about Gradients in Photoshop.

This time, a quick tour of the Gradient Editor, and then we learn how to change the transparency and colors, add and delete Stops, sample color from anywhere in the gradient or anywhere on your desktop to use in a Color Stop, and how to use the Foreground or Background colors in the gradient so the gradient changes as you change your colors. Finally, we learn how to add the new gradient to the panel, and how to save all the gradients, or just one of them, so you can have them forever!

Sunday, September 12, 2010

I've been working on new Chucks forSL kids! They're Chuck Pets, and are just like bunny slippers. Only they're not bunnies, and not slippers. :D The first batch are kitties!

You can choose White, Calico, Siamese or Black (which is perfect for Halloween.)

All of them are slip ons, which means that they don't have bows, and the laces are arranged in a ladder pattern.

L$150 for a pair of shoes. No copy, No mod, but there's a really nice, low-lag resize script that lets you easily get a perfect fit. When you're done, you can delete it, so your shoes won't even have that one little script in them.

Come try on a demo now, at the Kick the Can store in Livingtree. And yes, I'm afraid that they are only available in the Virtual World of Second Life, and not in the Real World. I'm sorry.